September 21, 2020
By Michael Hoffman for The Saker Blog
Copyright©2020 by Independent History and Research
Author’s Preface
Studies of Orthodox Judaic believers (followers of the post-Second Temple Judaism faithful to the Mishnah, Gemara and derivative sacred texts representative of the theology of the ancient Pharisees), have almost always been marked by two extremes: giddy approbation, or its antipode, atavistic contempt. Both views are predicated on fallacious judgments. In the former case, credulous acceptance of pious sloganeering and lachrymose self-righteousness, and in the other, a callous dismissal of the humanity of those who are captives to Talmudism, along with a failure to discern in our own behavior and beliefs those sins for which we censure the rabbis.
Nothing in this study is to be construed as giving aid and comfort to Jew-haters, anti-Semites or pseudo-Christians who direct detestation toward or advocate the oppression of Judaic persons. Our work entails the analysis of iniquitous ideas and texts; not people. Like the goyim (gentiles), Judaic persons are fully human beings deserving of dignity, respect, compassionate understanding and love, having been made in the image and likeness of God. Christians are enjoined by our Savior to “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44). These are among the most profound, counter-intuitive words of wisdom ever spoken, exemplifying the crux of the theology of the believers who make up the true Klal Yisroel (people of Biblical Israel).
There are some worldly ones who, upon discovering the extent to which they or others may have been cursed, hated or spitefully used by certain adherents of Orthodox Judaism, proceed to disobey or at the least, derogate the command of Jesus in Matthew 5:44. By this act of disobedience they are engaging in the mockery of becoming what they oppose: a Talmudist in spirit and a Christian in name only.
Historically, the counterfeit of Christ’s ecclesia has sometimes been termed “Churchianity,” and it was this impostor institution bearing the name of Christ that mirrored the revenge and contempt which it denounced as the apex of evil when practiced by rabbis. This bipolar approach to Judaism severely undercut Christendom’s evangelical mission, and served demonic spirits in so doing. Jesus defined our love for Him very sharply and clearly. If we love Him, then we will keep His commandments. Matthew 5:44 is one of Our Savior’s commands which we must place uppermost in our minds as we proceed to explore the theology of the Talmud.
Furthermore, believers in rabbinic Judaism are urgently in need of our concern and missionary effort. In addition to the obvious reason that they have refused a saving faith in their Messiah Jesus, the negative consequences of institutionalizing that rejection are enormous: oppression by Talmudic and cognate theological dictates, including the suffocating, tyrannical micro-management of their lives. The misnamed “Laws of Family Purity” (Halakhos of Niddah) for instance, are among the most reprehensible forms of oppression of women ever devised (cf. this writer’s Judaism Discovered, pp. 729-747).
Another illustration is the requirement that Jewish women remove from their homes every speck of chametz —leavened grain of any type (wheat, oats etc.). This dictate is a source of neurosis and misery. Not even a crumb may be present in her home during the eight days of Pesach (Passover). Her “failure” to totally eradicate every particle is believed to invite a curse on the family due to the “negligence” of the wife. In the Kabbalistic texts, chametz represents a Jew’s individuality, something which, the Orthodox rabbis assert, “must be eliminated at all costs.”
Another wretched factor is Talmudism’s incitement to unethical conduct. Among the dense thicket of heinous halakhic injunctions, is the command for Jewish males to become completely drunk on alcohol every year on the holy day of Purim (BT Megillah 7b). Then there is the admonition to Jews in BT Moed Katan 17a, to perpetrate evil in secret:
“If one sees his yetzer hara (evil inclination) gaining sway over him, let him go where he is not known, put on sordid clothes and do the evil that his heart desires.”
The lives of their own unborn babies are also forfeit in Orthodox Judaism. It was the ruling of the famed rabbinic law-giver “Rashi” (Shlomo Yitzchaki), that a Jewish baby, before being born, is not a human being with a soul (nefesh).
According to rabbinic law, it is permitted to kill the dehumanized child with abortion in situations where the unborn infant is considered a “pursuer” (rodef) who represents a danger to the mother (cf. BT Sanhedrin 72b, and Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Nezikim, Rotzeach u’Shmirat Nefesh 1:9).
The exposition in this study of radical truths concerning the theology and praxis of Orthodox Judaism is imperative for the advancement of both the Gospel and human reason, as well as for the protection of innocent human beings, particularly in Palestine and Lebanon. It is intended equally for the enlightenment and liberation of Jews and non-Jews, and it is toward those ends and in that spirit alone, that we have undertaken this work.
Under Threat of Death
It is worth noting that on the authority of the law of the rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud, in Berakhot 58a, the publication of this study renders its author a rodef (רודף, homicidal “pursuer”). According to the law of din rodef, a person designated a rodef is liable to be killed on sight.
In BT Berakhot 58a, an interlocutor is asking a rabbi residing in Persia about the racist denigration of non-Jews. The religious authority being questioned, Rabbi Sheila, responds to the questioner by stating that gentiles are beasts of burden (“donkeys”). Rabbi Sheila then deduces that the man who is the questioner is going to report this denigration of non-Jews to the rulers of Persia. At that point the Talmud states, “This man has the legal status of a rodef.” This section of Berakhot 58a concludes with the rabbi righteously killing the would-be reporter.
The Talmudic permission for the murder of reporters and scholars who testify to the factual content of rabbinic law has never been rescinded.
The rodef is also found among those who seek to return land stolen from the Palestinians. As recently as November 4, 1995 a dramatic murder of an individual classified as a rodef took place in Tel Aviv, when no less an eminent personage than the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who sought a land-for-peace treaty with the Palestinians, was gunned down by Yigal Amir, a zealous Israeli Talmud student. An alumnus of Bar Ilan University, Mr. Amir specifically cited the Talmud as his justification for murdering the Israeli Prime Minister.
In endeavoring to answer the question:
“What Does Rabbinic Judaism Say About What Makes Jews and Gentiles Different?”
Our Response is Rooted in Halakha (Rabbinic law)
The founding legal texts of rabbinic Judaism are the Mishnah and the Gemara. They are collectively termed the “Torah she-be’al peh” (תורה שבעל פה), i.e. the oral law committed to writing as the Talmud Bavli (i.e. Babylonian Talmud, abbreviated as “BT”).
According to the Babylonian Talmud, God himself is subservient to the rabbis: “Since God already gave the Torah to the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai we no longer pay attention to heavenly voices. God must submit to the decisions of a majority vote of the rabbis.” (BT Bava Metzia 59b).
Consequently, the Word of God (Scripture) is subordinate to the traditions of the rabbis. These traditions were previously oral. They were committed to writing, first as the Mishnah, in the early centuries (Tannaitic era), after the crucifixion of Israel’s Messiah. The subsequent portion of the Talmudic canon (the Gemara) produced mainly during the Amoraim era (circa 300-450 A.D.) was written in the Aramaic language.
The Babylonian Talmud (as distinct from the Jerusalem Talmud which is not authoritative), is the holiest text of the religion of Judaism. The revered Pharisaic “sages of blessed memory” decree this themselves in the Talmud. In BT Shabbat 15c and Baba Metzia 33A, we see the Three Declarations of the much-honored, goyim-despising Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, one of the most adored of all the “sages.” Yohai wrote: A. “He who occupies himself with Scripture gains merit that is no merit. B. “He who occupies himself with Mishnah gains merit for which people receive a reward. C. “He who occupies himself with Talmud — there is no source of merit greater than this.”
What part of the preceding unimpeachable statement from the supreme sacred book of Orthodox Judaism do gentiles and Christians not understand? Old Testament law is a distant second in Orthodox Judaism. It is studied, misapplied and nullified by being read through the distorting prism of the Talmud.
The non-Biblical basis of Orthodox Judaism is acknowledged in the Mishnah: “The laws concerning the Sabbath, Festal-offerings and acts of trespass are as mountains hanging by a hair, for they have scant Scriptural basis but many laws” (Mishnah Hagiga i, 8).
“Torah-True” Jews?
“Torah” is Orthodox Judaism’s spurious badge of authority. The rabbis proclaim that they have the Torah, have mastered the Torah, base their laws on the Torah and that they are “Torah-true.” Yet these rabbinic claims are a deceptive play on words, for the “Torah” upon which they base their laws is not the Old Testament, but the counterfeit Torah SheBeal Peh. Hence, when the rabbis are acclaiming their relationship with the “Torah,” Christians are deceived into imagining that the rabbis are harkening to their allegiance to the Old Testament (Torah SheBichtav), when Orthodox Judaism’s laws emanate from the man-made Talmud Bavli, which is the “Torah” they regard as supreme.
In 2010 something of a confession concerning this fact came to the fore in the Judaic media. In an article at Ynetnews.com of Feb. 10, 2010 titled, “Time to Face Haredi Secret,” Efrat Shapira-Rosenberg reported a remarkable admission about the ultra-Orthodox “Haredi” (Hasidic) Judaics:
“Not too long ago I happened to speak with a young man who studies at one of the ‘flagships’ of the Haredi yeshiva (Talmudic academy) world; a yeshiva which is no doubt among the most important and elitist ones. We spoke about various issues, and at one point I referred to a certain Biblical character I’m especially fond of. This figure was not one of the Bible’s leading actors like Abraham or Moses, but it was not a particularly marginal character either, but rather, an interesting and significant one in my view; one that conveys an important message to biblical scholars.
“So why am I telling you all this? Because the guy had no idea what I was talking about. He never heard about this figure, he was unfamiliar with it, and he was certainly unfamiliar with the important messages it teaches us.
“…the time has come to shatter the myth and explicitly address the most open secret which we all have known for a while now – Haredi education in its various yeshivas only focuses on one thing, while creating ignorant students on every other front. An important clarification: I am not referring, like secular critics, to the Haredi disregard for subjects such as math, science, English literature, etc…This is a different problem.
“The issue I have is with the fact that the vast majority of yeshivas only teach Talmud and related questions and answers. That’s it.
“What about the Bible? I am not disparaging, Heaven forbid, the importance of the Talmud. Yet for once let’s talk about the religious people who strictly adhere to the mitzvahs (blessed deeds), yet are unfamiliar with the Bible…And this is not an anomaly – this is the norm. The only Biblical verses familiar to yeshiva students are those quoted by Talmud sages, and that’s that. The Bible is seen as a sort of inferior genre that is appropriate for young children (or for women)…” (End quote)
Jews who reject the Talmudic traditions of men and regard as supreme law only the Old Testament Word of God, are known as “Karaites” (“Scripturalists”). Karaism arose in reaction to the growing influence of the Talmud emanating from the Babylonian Talmudic academies in Pumbedita and Sura (in present day Iraq), among Jews of the late 7th and early 8th centuries. The Jewish patriarch of Karaism was an 8th century rabbinic convert from Talmudism, Anan ben David. His book of precepts, Sefer ha-Mizvot, undercut the authority of the Mishnah and Gemara. He famously stated, “Search diligently in the Scriptures and do not rely on my opinion.”
Due to their Bible-only devotion, throughout their history Karaite Jews have been persecuted and even killed by Talmudic zealots. The existence of the Karaites is largely unknown to the Vatican II Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants who imagine that Talmudic rabbis are faithful Scripturalists.
The Talmud of Babylon and its successor texts:
Authoritative Halakha or mere Commentary and Debates?
In order to answer the question about what makes Jews different, it is necessary that we refute a familiar defense against charges that the Babylonian Talmud is the basis of the laws of Orthodox Judaism. Apologists assert that the more blatantly horrible passages in the Babylonian Talmud do not constitute the law of Judaism (halakha), but only commentary and debate. The truth is very different, however. Halakha is comprised of the traditions found in the non-Biblical, sacred rabbinic texts. Those texts as a whole comprise the Oral Law, what Josephus termed, paradôsis (“tradition”).
The oral traditions of the Pharisees is the foundation of the Talmud, as Jesus declared (cf. Mark 7; Matthew 15). Those traditions consist of extra-Biblical superstitions and occultism, self-worship, racist hatred for non-Jews and sheer nonsense. BT Ketubot 60b-61a: “If a woman copulates in a grain mill she will have epileptic children. One who copulates on the ground will have children with long necks.” BT Berakoth 55a: “A certain matron said to Rabbi Judah b. Ila’i: ‘Your face is [red] like that that of pig-breeders and goyim!’ The rabbi replied, ‘On my faith both are forbidden me, but there are 24 toilets between my house and the Beth Midrash (house of study), and when I go there I test myself in all of them.”
Apologists assert that the Talmud is only a record of debates (mahloket) between tanna’im and amora’im (the authors of the Talmud Bavli known collectively as Chazal who lived in the early centuries A.D.), and that by focusing on one portion of the controversy and upholding that passage as authoritative, the critic errs, for no legal sanction is given to either side of the “debates in the Talmud.” This is demonstrably false. The Mishnah and subsequent rabbinic amplifications of it comprise the halakha, by which every believing Orthodox Judaic person is bound, down to the most minute and intimate particulars of his or her daily life.
How Talmudic law is deduced and adjudicated is often an enigma to outsiders, but that it constitutes halakha is certain. The key point is that the appearance of Talmudic indeterminacy does not preclude law-making by majority rabbinic consensus — which is the process by which Talmudic halakha is determined in a given time and particular situation, both in terms of a decision on what constitutes the oral law of the elders as presented in the Mishnah (halakha lemosheh misinai), as well as the subsequent Mitzvot derabanan (rabbinical commandments) found in the Gemara, arising from the deductive process known as Middot shehatorah nidreshet bahen.
As a public relations ploy, many rabbis and Zionist leaders pretend otherwise, revealing the low opinion they have of the public, who they believe will swallow the line about the Talmud being a mere book of discourses and disputes, where no definitive teaching or authoritative law-making emerges. The intent behind the deliberate sowing of this deception rests in the stratagem that by promoting the idea that the Talmud is a collection of debates and commentary without force of law, no indictment of it is possible, since another text can always be cited to contradict the offending one. However, the investigator who examines the historic discipline and practice of Orthodox Judaism can ascertain that a body of law codified in the Babylonian Talmud exerts the most profound command over individual Judaics and governs their conduct.
What is disputed in the Talmud is often the Yud Gimmel Midot, not the Halakha l’Moshe M’Sinai. In presenting the Talmud to the public this distinction is often not made. There are thousands of discourses in authoritative rabbinic texts about minutiae, such as which dishes can be washed on Shabbos (the Sabbath), and how they may be washed. Disagreements along those lines are not disagreements concerning the non-negotiable, core Talmudic dogma that forms the halakha itself.
Let’s look at a dispute involving situation ethics: the ban on a Jewish man shaving his beard, the hair-splitting dimensions of which would try the patience of most sane people. Rabbi Maimonides (also referred to as the “Rambam”), asserted that the rationale behind the ban was the fact that the goyim, as personified by the chukos ho’akum (customs) of Catholic priests, were clean-shaven. To distinguish goyim from Jews therefore, Maimonides decreed that beards on Jewish males were obligatory. A point in this dissertation on this particular situation ethic was raised centuries later by the learned posek (determiner of halakha), Rabbi Yosef Babad, in his Minchas Chinuch, a 19th century disquisition on the 13th century Sefer ha-Chinuch, itself a treatise on the halakha codified by Maimonides in the 12th century. Rabbi Babad in his ruling followed the clarification proffered by a 17th century halakhist, Rabbi ha-Levi Segal (“the Taz”), stating that there were extenuating circumstances and dispensations in connection with shaving, in that when it becomes the general practice of Catholic priests to grow beards, Jews would no longer be obliged not to shave.
To say that there are tens of thousands of other cases like the preceding would be a low estimate. Gedolim, poskim and the other prodigiously erudite legal authorities of Orthodox Judaism, clarify, modify, squabble and split hairs over puerile trivia, such as whether a Jew may go to sleep while wearing shoes. (No, because it is “a taste of death,” according to BT Yoma 78b. However, if the shoes are to be worn during a brief nap, it could be allowed, as specified in Lekutei Maharich Tefillas Rav NB’H p. 107; Pe’as Sadecha 37, and Shemiras Haguf V’hanefesh [115, footnote 2]). What happens if during his supposedly short nap the Jewish person oversleeps? The response to that requisite question is found in another dozen rabbinic sources.
Then there are the pages of responsum concerning the permissibility of using colored toilet deodorizer on Shabbos (Sabbath): “Some poskim say it is considered dyeing (coloring) on Shabbos,” which is forbidden (cf. Minchas Shlomo, 2:14 and Rav Y.A. Silber: Oz Nidberu 13:14). “Harav Yisrael Belsky maintains that if the deodorizer hangs from the rim of the toilet then one may use it on Shabbos, while if it is in the toilet itself then it is considered coloring on Shabbos,” and is not allowed (cf. Moishe Dovid Lebovitz [2010], p. 89). Orthodox Judaism consists of a universe of lawyers who bear the name rabbi. It is the domain of a theocratic bureaucracy so overgrown with laws, regulations, stipulations and minutiae — as well as innumerable derivatives thereof — that it makes Charles Dickens’ Circumlocution Office look like a libertarian utopia by comparison.
Rules of derivation and procedure (Yud Gimmel Midot) cannot compare with the oral law, which rabbinic dogma fantasizes that Yahweh gave to Moses. To the am ha’aretz (ignorant bumpkins) it is insinuated that the Talmud is a debating society where everything is on the table. This insinuation reveals contempt for the person, whether Judaic or non-Judaic, who dares to check into the matter. Using the record of Talmudic disputes on issues pertaining to situation ethics to maintain that in the Talmud the dogmas of rabbinic Judaism are merely batted back and forth in debates which do not have a significant function in forming halakha, is almost too asinine to merit comment. Nonetheless, numerous persons troubled by candid documentation of the uncensored contents of the Talmud, when given a line of malarkey about it being a series of legally non-authoritative debates, too often swallow it — accepting the legend that rabbinic Judaism is the religion of the Old Testament prophets from which was born western civilization’s concepts of free will, freedom of conscience and reasoning for one’s self.
In truth, the creed founded upon the Talmud is wholly alien in relation to that noble western ethic. The Agudath Israel Orthodox rabbinic organization publishes Hamodia newspaper, in which we find the following representative statement in the 19 Adar 5763 (Feb. 21, 2003) issue, p. 14: “From time immemorial, every G-d-fearing Jew subjected his personal and communal affairs to the guidance of his Rav (rabbi), understanding the folly of following the dictates of his own heart or mind.”
The laws of the Mishnah and Gemara as decided by the consensus of Chazal through their supposed supernatural power of siyata dishmaya, as stated in authoritative law codes derived from the Talmud Bavli, such as the Mishneh Torah, Shulchan Aruch, Mishnah Berurah etc., are binding legal precedents. Opinions inconsistent with the Talmudic canon are void.
Because the principle of situation ethics is central to Orthodox Judaism, halakha is applied and enforced according to stringencies and leniencies geared to a particular period of time. These distinctions date to the “zuggot pairs” of the Tannaitic era.
“Show no Mercy to a non-Jew”
In the Middle Ages (the Rishonim era), Moses Maimonides devoted twelve years to extracting every decision and law from the Talmud of Babylon, and arranging them into fourteen systematic volumes. The work was completed in 1180 as the Mishneh Torah.
In the Mishneh Torah, Moses Maimonides taught in “Avodat Kochavim” chapter 10, “Show no mercy to a non-Jew.”
He gave the following example: “If we see a non-Jew being swept away or drowning in the river, we should not help him. If we see that his life is in danger, we should not save him.”
Situation Ethics in the Killing of Christians
Maimonides also taught that Christians should, under the proper circumstances, be killed. The “proper circumstances” are predicated on Rabbi Maimonides’ situation ethics: when Talmudists are powerfully dominant over goyim then worshippers of Jesus can be executed.
This is the foundation of Rabbi Maimonides’ ruling on when Jewish doctors may refuse to treat non-Jewish patients: when Jews are sufficiently supreme in a nation that the refusal to treat will not result in repercussions and reprisals from goyim, who would be too cowed to retaliate in a nation where Jewish supremacy was nearly total. It is instructive to observe that Maimonides in Mishneh Torah, Sefer Ha-Mada, Aodah Zara 10:1-2, ruled that goyim not currently at war with Israel should neither be actively killed, nor saved from death: “It is prohibited both to save them from dying and to kill them.”
This is not a simple open-and-closed finding. Many more rabbinic texts have been generated, setting out the situation ethics entailed by this injunction. Cf. for example Rabbi Nahmanides, Hidushei HaRambam, Makot 9a. The key law giver Rabbi Joseph Karo, compiler of the highly credited legal volumes of the Shulchan Aruch, looks upon Maimonides’ ruling not as a ban on the killing of goyim, but a means for temporarily dispensing a Jew from the obligation to kill them, while doing nothing to save them from death.
With this in mind, we observe how halakha is applied and enforced subject to contingencies such as the ones that Maimonides stipulated: the legal, political and social position of Jews in the nation in which they reside, and the goyim with whom they are dealing.
So for example, in contemporary occupied Palestine (“Israel”) most Christians, Muslims and Arabs in general may be killed with relative impunity, as the situation demands. There may be a temporary uproar in the western world in protest, but historically these protests have subsided, with no lasting detrimental effect on the Israeli state. In times past however, in nations where Christian or Muslim governments were vigilant concerning crimes against non-Jewish persons, the field of action against Christians and Muslims as promulgated by law-giver Rabbi Moses Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah, was restricted by the circumstances. Maimonides himself served for a time as the personal physician to the family of the sultan of Egypt, ostensibly dispensing with the Talmudic dictum of showing no mercy to goyim. The situation demanded however, that the Talmudic ethic be suspended for the time being for a more paramount objective — to allow Maimonides to gain influence with the nation-state’s ruling family.
During the administration of President Barack Obama, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli physicians and hospitals were giving medical treatment to the Nusra Front’s injured al Qaeda fighters, so as to hasten their return to the Syrian battlefield, where they were waging war against the government of Bashar al-Assad (cf. “Al Qaeda a Lesser Evil?” Wall Street Journal online, March 12, 2015; and Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2015, p. A6). This is another instance of how rabbinic injunctions can be temporarily suspended under certain circumstances, in line with Orthodox Judaism’s situation ethics.
Hence, there is certainly debate within the rabbinate over how, when and to what degree to apply the Talmudically-derived halakha.
To extrapolate from the situation wherein questions of timing and tactical application arise within the rabbinate, to a nullification of the existence and compelling force of law which the Talmudic Mishnah and Gemara exert, is without foundation.
For example, there is no authentic debate about gentiles having lesser souls (or in the case of Chabad-Lubavitch theology, no souls whatsoever).
That goyim are nefesh-deficient is the fixed sacred law of Orthodox Judaism. How the law that goyim are less than fully human is applied is indeed subject to discussion and contestation in the Mishneh Torah, Kesef Mishneh and hundreds of cognate legal texts derived from the Talmud. But the halakha comprising the Talmud of Babylon itself is incontestable. When putative defenders of the Talmud engage in absurdity and point to debates about how Talmudic halakha is to be interpreted, as evidence that the source of the Torah she-be’al peh—the Talmudic texts themselves—comprise only an admired collection of debates and discussions, they are playing a prank on their goyische dupes.
In addition to the Mishnah and Gemara of the Talmud Bavli, the laws of rabbinic Judaism are also derived from successor legal texts emanating from the Talmud. These include, but are not limited to, the Mishneh Torah, the Shulchan Aruch, the Mishnah Berurah, the Shulchan Aruch Harav, the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, the Igros Moshe, and many dozens of additional post-Talmudic sacred volumes having the force of law in Ashkenazic Orthodox Judaism.
Where is the Word of God, you ask, amid the miasma of anthropocentric laws which constitute these rabbinic traditions? It’s a good question and one that sola Scriptura Protestants—who excoriate Catholicism over its belief in a Bible-plus-Tradition theology—have generally either conspicuously ignored, or unconscionably neglected.
The Inherent Moral Turpitude of the Goyim
We intended to demonstrate that rabbinic law imputes an inherent moral turpitude to non-Jews and classes them as innately malevolent.
The goyim are grouped together with categories of criminals and transgressors who cannot act as a witness in a Beis din (rabbinic court; cf. Shulchan Arukh: Hoshen Mishpat 34).
Goyim are detested and feared in part because it is taught that they are congenitally predisposed to commit murder:
“A Jew should not be alone with a goy, because the goy is suspect to commit homicide.” (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 168:17).
In the laws governing kashrut (kosher food and drink) victuals may not be consumed by a Jew if their preparation was entirely by a goy. A goy handling Jewish food must be supervised by a frum (Talmud-observant) Jew, because a goy cannot be trusted not to render the food or drink impure, or poisonous. Even this supervised food preparation may not be permissible in situations where a stringency, known as the rabbinic prohibition of bishul akum is enforced. (Cf. Pischei Teshuvah Y.D. 113:1, Aruch ha-Shulchan 113:50; Y.D. 113:16; Chochmas Adam 66:11). Under certain circumstances wine that has even been touched by a non-Jew “has been defiled and is unfit for use by Jews” (BT Avodah Zarah 72b).
When the opportunity to save a Judaic human life (pikuah nefesh) conflicts with the observance of the Sabbath, saving the Judaic life takes precedence. Rabbinic legal authorities also distinguish between the obligation to save a Judaic life on the Sabbath and the life of a goy.
Israel Meir Kagan (1838–1933), the halachic authority known as the Chofetz Chaim (a.k.a. the Hafetz Hayyim), condemned the behavior of any Judaic physician who did not discriminate between Jews and non-Jews. Concerning Judaic physicians, Rabbi Kagan wrote in Mishnah Berurah: O.H. 330, “…to treat a non-Jew…there is no authority for them to do so.” (The halakhic status of Rabbi Kagan’s Mishnah Berurah, was assessed by Simcha Fishbane in The Encyclopedia of Judaism, as follows, “His greatest work, which remains the strongest influence on Orthodox practice today and whose authority is considered final, is Mishnah Berurah [1884-1907], in six volumes”).
It is a minhag (a custom without the force of law) to refer to goyim using racial slurs. Non-Jewish men are termed a “male abomination” (shegetz; plural: shkotzim). With regard to non-Jewish women the racist term of derision is shiksa, denoting a female abomination.
“Only Jews are Human”
The Babylonian Talmud states, “Only Jews are human. Non-Jews are not human.” (Bava Metzia 114b. Also: BT Kerithoth 6b and 58a).
One of the earliest laws distinguishing between Jews and goyim is found in the Babylonian Talmud, in Sanhedrin 57a:
“Regarding bloodshed, the following distinction applies, if a non-Jew killed another non-Jew, or a non-Jew killed a Jew, the killer is liable for execution; if a Jew killed a non-Jew, he is exempt from punishment.”
“Regarding a Jew stealing from a non-Jew, the act is permitted.” (BT Sanhedrin 57a).
It is commanded in the Talmud’s Kiddushin 66c: “The best of the gentiles: kill him; the best of snakes: smash its skull; the best of women: is filled with witchcraft.” (The uncensored version of this text appears in Tractate Soferim [New York, M. Higer, 1937], 15:7, p. 282).
The Talmud decrees in Sanhedrin 81b-82a: “All gentile women without exception are: ‘Niddah, Shifchah, Goyyah and Zonah’ (menstrual filth, slaves, heathens and prostitutes).
The Talmud rules that black people are cursed: “The sages taught: Three violated that directive and engaged in intercourse while in the ark, and all of them punished for doing so. They are: the dog and the raven, and Ham, son of Noah. The dog was punished in that it is bound; the raven was punished in that it spits, and Ham was afflicted in that his skin turned black.” (BT Sanhedrin 108b).
The preceding Talmudic legal text has directly contributed to the suffering and misery of black Africans enslaved on the basis that they were accursed descendants of Ham and their enslavement was foreordained by God. Nowhere is this bigoted lie found in the Bible. It is entirely the invention of the Talmudic and Midrashic theology of men.
Moreover, a declaration by the supreme arbiter of rabbinic law in the Ashkenazic world, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, created a justification for white slave-holders and slave-traders (both Judaic and Christian) to enslave black people for life and treat them as chattel (animals). Maimonides performed this service for the slave trade in his seminal text, The Guide of the Perplexed, which is celebrated throughout the western world (his image hangs in a place of honor in the halls of Congress and numerous buildings in the United States are named for him). In The Guide of the Perplexed, this “illustrious” rabbi taught that black people are “irrational animals” who are situated midway between the ape and the human (cf. University of Chicago Press, Shlomo Pines translation, vol. II, [1963], p. 618).
The leading disciple of Maimonides in American 20th century politics and statecraft was Leo Strauss, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. The Neoconservative (“Neocon”) intellectuals he influenced were a significant force in George W. Bush’s decision to needlessly invade and make war upon the nation of Iraq. President Bush filled many key command and advisory positions with Neocons, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, Douglas Feith, John Bolton and Ari Fleischer.
The founding sacred book of the theologically influential and, in the United States, politically powerful, Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch Judaism, is the Tanya, which was written by Chabad’s founder, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyady. This foundational Chabad volume decrees that:
“Gentile souls are of a completely different and inferior order. They are totally evil, with no redeeming qualifies whatsoever. Their material abundance derives from supernal refuse. Indeed, they themselves derive from refuse, which is why they are more numerous than the Jews.”
(Cf. Habad: The Hasidism of Shneur Zalman of Lyady [Jacob Aronson, 1993], pp. 108-109). Apparently Rabbi Zalman never read or credited Genesis 22:17 in which God informs Abraham that his descendants will be “more numerous than the stars in the sky.”
Shneur Zalman: “The souls of the goyim emanate from the unclean kelipot (husks) which contain no good whatsoever.” (Cf. Opening the Tanya, p. 43).
The Kabbalah in the volume “Book of Splendor” (Zohar), defines kelipot as “husks of evil…waste matter…bad blood…dross…dregs…the root of evil” (Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, pp. 125, 139, 156-157).
Israeli “settler” rabbis such as the late Moshe Levenger and Meir Kahane took Rabbi Zalman’s dogma to heart and encouraged terrorism against Palestinian civilians. Levenger shot to death an unarmed Palestinian store keeper and served less than a year in an Israeli jail for the murder. Today, tens of thousands of rabbis from Brooklyn to Moscow and Jerusalem, preach and teach the soul-searing dehumanization of goyim promulgated by the revered founder of Chabad-Lubavitch Judaism. Palestinians are oppressed, robbed, beaten and killed based upon the theological determination that they, like goyim in general, are not human; indeed, garbage (“supernal refuse”).
In Orthodox Judaism goyim are not to be trusted: “…a gentile’s word is totally discounted regarding ritual prohibitions…In a situation where a gentile’s word is not relied upon, his conversion to Judaism will not influence our acceptance of his testimony.” —Rabbi Ezra Basri, Chief Justice, District Court, Jerusalem, “The Testimony of a Gentile Regarding Ritual Matters,” in Ethics of Business Finance & Charity, vol. 2, chapter 13.
In Orthodox Judaism there is no obligation to be fair to goyim:“The laws (of fairness) mentioned above only apply between two Jewish neighbors. Gentiles do not necessarily respect these principles and, hence, there is no obligation to show them such consideration in return.” —Rabbi Ezra Basri, Chief Justice, vol. 4, chapter 2.
Raping Goyim
In 2014 Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a professor at the elite Israeli Bar-Ilan University stated that the only action that can successfully deter armed resistance by Arabs, is to rape their sisters or their mothers. Prof. Kedar’s words were not an aberration or a misinterpretation. They were consistent with rabbinic law.
Though it will be claimed by the usual public relations hacks that the Bar Illan University professor’s monstrous rape-deterrent observation is “condemned by the Jewish tradition” (citing, for example, BT Kiddushin 22), there are rabbinic escape clauses which justify rape. First, the rape target must be classified as a zonah (prostitute) or a nokri (hostile alien). The supreme Ashkenazic halachic authority, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, rules that a Judaic soldier may rape this type of female “Yefas To’ar” (prisoner of war), when he is not actively fighting a battle (Hilchos Melachim 8:3).
A text in the Meorot theology journal of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinic School, gives permission to Judaic soldiers to rape a female goy battle captive one time:
“It is the consensus of many halachic decisors (judges of rabbinic law) that the yefat to’ar (female goy battle captive) can be subject to involuntary intercourse, though only once, after which she must undergo a specific regimen described in the Torah (Torah sheBeal peh i.e. the Mishnah and Gemara), conversion and marriage, before her captor is permitted further sexual relations with her…”
Source: Dov. S. Zakheim, Meorot vol. 6: no. 1 (2006), p. 5. (Mr. Zakheim was Under Secretary of Defense in the administration of George W. Bush, 2001-2004).
Advocates of raping non-Jews can be found at the highest levels of the Israel ruling class. Here is the permission to commit rape given by Eyal Karim, the Chief Rabbi of the Israeli Army:
“The wars of Israel […] are mitzvah (divinely blessed) wars, in which they differ from the rest of the wars the nations (goyim) wage among themselves. Since, essentially, a war is not an individual matter, but rather nations wage war as a whole, there are cases in which the personality of the individual is ‘erased’ for the benefit of the whole. And vice versa: sometimes you risk a large unit for the saving of an individual, when it is essential for purposes of morale. One of the important and critical values during war is maintaining the army’s fighting ability […]
“As in war the prohibition against risking your life is broken for the benefit of others, so are the prohibitions against immorality and of kashrut (kosher). Wine touched by gentiles, consumption of which is prohibited in peacetime, is allowed at war, to maintain the good spirit of the warriors. Consumption of prohibited foods is permitted at war (and some say, even when kosher food is available), to maintain the fitness of the warriors, even though they are prohibited during peacetime.
“Just so, war removes some of the prohibitions on sexual relations (gilui arayot), and even though fraternizing with a gentile woman is a very serious matter, it was permitted during wartime (under the specific terms) out of understanding for the hardship endured by the warriors. And since the success of the whole at war is our goal, the Torah permitted the individual to satisfy the evil urge (yetzer ha’ra), under the conditions mentioned, for the purpose of the success of the whole.” (End quote).
Rabbi Karim’s words would be despicable even if he were not the chief spiritual teacher and counselor of the Israeli army which holds in its iron fist the nearly helpless captive population of Palestine.
Weaponizing the Babylonian Talmud’s Racism and Bigotry Toward Non-Jews
Racist and hateful Talmudic doctrine about non-Jews has been weaponized by the halakhic injunctions of rabbis in “Israel” and the United States, and the expulsion, subjugation and mass murder of Palestinians and the Israeli slaughter of Arabs in Lebanon, can only be fully comprehended within the context of the anti-gentile halakha derived from the Talmud, which was formerly concealed, obscured and denied, and which is increasingly being published in the Hebrew language press, and in the case of the Steinsaltz Talmud, in English.
“Jewish Superiority and the Question of Exile”
Rabbi Saadya Grama is one of the intellectual stars of the Beth Medrash Govoha, otherwise known as the “Lakewood yeshiva,” an internationally renowned center for Talmud study located in New Jersey. In 2003 Grama published the book, Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut (“Jewish Superiority and the Question of Exile”). In it he declaimed:
“The Jew by his source and in his essence is entirely good. The gentile, by his source and in his very essence, is completely evil. This is not simply a matter of religious distinction, but rather of two different species…
“Jewish success in the world is completely contingent upon the failure of other peoples. Jews experience good fortune only when gentiles experience catastrophe…The difference between Jews and gentiles is not historical or cultural, but rather genetic and unalterable.”
Rabbi Grama further stated that the “Torah” mandates that Jews, while in exile, should employ such means as “…deception, duplicity and bribery in their dealing with gentiles.”
Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut was endorsed by eminent rabbinic authorities, including the distinguished Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler, the Rosh yeshiva (Dean of the seminary) at Lakewood. He lauded Grama for his teaching on: “…the subjects of Exile, the Election of Israel, and her exaltation above and superiority to all other nations, all in accordance with the viewpoint of the Torah, based on the solid instruction he has received from his teachers.” (A year after the publication of Grama’s supremacist volume was published, Congress awarded the Lakewood yeshiva a federal grant of $500,000).
Murder Manuals: Baruch Hagever and Torat Hamelech
“Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life”
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh (born in 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri), is considered one of Chabad-Lubavitch’s leading experts on the Kabbalah. He is a celebrated educator and influencer in the USA and the Israeli state. Like Rabbi Grama, Ginsburgh also teaches the dogma that Jews possess a genetically-based superiority over non-Jews.
“If you have two people drowning, a Jew and a non-Jew, the Torah says you save the Jewish life first,” Rabbi Ginsburgh asserts.
He teaches: “If every single cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is a part of God. Therefore, something is special about Jewish DNA.”
Rabbi Ginsburgh stated further, “If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.”
Rabbi Ginsburgh is the author of Baruch Hagever, a book praising the example of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 40 Palestinians as they prayed in a mosque in Hebron on Purim, February 1994. In Baruch Hagever the rabbi termed the slaughter, “…an act of bravery whose source was divine grace.”
Baruch Hagever is a summary provided by one of Ginsburgh’s students, of a class Rabbi Ginsburgh taught in 1994 during which he identified positive aspects of Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs as:
“The sanctification of the name of God…The life of Israel is worth more than the life of the goy and even if the goy does not intend to hurt Israel, it is permissible to hurt him in order to save Israel.”
“Legally,” Ginsburg asserts, “if a Jew kills a non-Jew, he’s not called a murderer. He didn’t transgress the Sixth Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not murder.’ This applies only to Jews killing Jews.” (This is a nearly verbatim reference to BT Sanhedrin 57a).
Ginsburgh’s teachings have incited a new generation of Israeli murderers who rely upon his Talmudic theology to justify the killing of goyim.
This homicidal rabbinic theology is imparted in a book co-authored in 2009 by the Rosh yeshiva (Dean) of Ginsburgh’s seminary, Od Yosef Chai in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. It is titled Torat Ha-Melekh: Berure Halakha Be’-inyene Malkhut U-Milhamot (“The King’s Torah: Halakhic Clarifications Regarding Matters of Kingdom and Wars”). The title has been abbreviated as Torat Hamelech. It was written by the Rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, in collaboration with Rabbi Yosef Elitzur. It explicitly claims that the life of a Jew is worth more than the life of a non-Jew, and permits the killing of innocent non-Jews, including children.
One section of the volume teaches that it is permitted to kill non-Jewish infants on the enemy side during warfare “if there is a good chance they will grow up to be like their evil parents.”
Other reasons the rabbis furnish for the permission to kill non-Jewish children include if they “block the rescue of Jews…Little children are often situated in this way…it is permitted to kill them because their very presence facilitates the killing (of Jews)…(p. 215).
“It is also permitted to kill the children of the leader (of the enemy) in order to put pressure on him…” (p. 215).
In another instance, Rabbis Shapira and Elitzur write, “Every citizen of our kingdom who opposes us and who encourages [our enemies’] fighters, or expresses satisfaction with their deeds, is considered an assailant and may be killed….”
On p. 185 the rabbinic authors state that whoever uses freedom of speech to weaken the Jews is considered to be a rodef and can be killed. They base this on the ruling by the Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew, who determined that whoever causes Jews to be reluctant to kill (“faint-hearted while at war”) deserves death (cf. Gur Aryeh on Parashat Mattot).
In chapter four of Torat Hamelech, Rabbis Shapira and Elitzur state that because the life of the Jew is superior to that of the non-Jew, “…there is a consensus among the halakhic sources that it is permitted to kill non-Jews to save the lives of Jews…It is permitted as well in cases in which we exploit the presence of innocent young children (and harm them) in order to harm their parents” (p. 199).
The rabbis further state, “There is a svara (a compelling reason founded on intuition) for hurting young, non-Jewish children if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such cases, we should aim our destruction specifically towards them. Young children will benefit from this killing since they would have grown up in an unrepaired way (be-tzurah lo metukenet), that would require their killing anyway. Therefore, it would be better to kill them now” (pp. 205-207).
The final chapter of this rabbinic law book urges the employment of merciless vengeance against the goyim (pp. 217-224). Torat Hamelech concludes with an indirect call for vigilante killings of Palestinians, many of which have occurred since the volume appeared, to little publicity in the West, such as the burning to death in 2015 of a Palestinian baby, Ali Dawabsheh, and his mother and father, by a youthful Talmudist, Amiram Ben Uliel.
Two dozen Orthodox rabbis have signed an open letter calling on the government to free Amiram Ben Uliel. The adult son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yair Netanyahu, has raised money for the child-killer’s legal costs.
Rabbi Shapira and Rabbi Elitzur declare that individual Jews can make the decision to kill goyim extra-judicially: “One does not need a decision by the nation to permit the spilling of blood…sometimes one must commit ruthless acts that are designed to create the correct element of fear.” (End quote from Torat Hamelech).
In addition to Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, prominent rabbis Dov Lior and Ya’acov Yosef gave Torat Hamelech their blessing. This book has been circulated among Israeli military and police forces.
Rabbi Ishay Berg also wrote in approval of Rabbis Shapira and Elitzur’s teaching: “The Jewish soul is, in fact, the thrusting of the world into the absolute, into an entity with a validity of existence which cannot be compared with the fragile reality which we see before our eyes. This perception lies behind the ruling that the life of a Jew and the fulfillment of the commandments are superior to the life of a non-Jew in any situation” (M’aneh Le-Derekh Ha-Melekh).
In 1989 a mob of Zionists led by Rabbi Ginsburgh rampaged through a village in the West Bank region of Palestine, engaging in arson and murdering a 13-year-old Palestinian girl. A Talmud (“yeshiva”) student was arrested and put on trial in an Israeli court. Ginsburgh spoke for the defense, pointing out the lower value of the life of the Palestinian child: “The people of Israel must rise and declare in public that a Jew and goy are not, God forbid, the same. Any trial that assumes that Jews and goyim are equal is a travesty of justice.”
In March, 1996 Rabbi Ginsburgh delivered a Purim lecture claiming to quote Chabad-Lubavitch Grand Rabbi Schneerson on the subject of “the mitzvahs of war for the sake of revenge and war for the sake of conquering the Land of Israel.” According to Rabbi Ginsburgh, Grand Rabbi Schneerson taught “that war for the sake of revenge was a much higher mitzvah” (blessed act). Ginsburg asserts that criticism of him is equivalent to criticism of “the Lubavitcher rebbe” (Schneerson) and of the תורה שבעל פה — the Torah sheBeal peh itself. (Cf. Lawrence Cohler, “Hero or Racist? Are Jewish lives really more valuable than non-Jewish ones?” The Jewish Week, April 26, 1996, pp. 12 and 31).
Yitzchak Ginsburg was a 2019 recipient of an award from the Israeli Ministry of Education honoring him for his “Torah wisdom.”
(www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-education-minister-to-speak-at-confab-honor)
According to Judaic scholars Norton Mezvinsky and Israel Shahak in their book, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, “One of the basic tenets of the Lurianic Kabbalah is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body. According to the Lurianic Kabalah the world was created solely for the sake of Jews; the existence of non-Jews was subsidiary.”
The largest funeral for any Israeli dignitary in the history of the Israeli state was conducted in honor of the memory and teachings of an advocate of the genocide of Palestinians, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in Jerusalem in October, 2013. His funeral was attended by an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 Israeli mourners. The New York Times described Rabbi Yosef as “the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party…”
The Associated Press reported, “Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the religious scholar and spiritual leader of Israel’s Sephardic Jews who transformed his downtrodden community of immigrants from North Africa and Arab nations and their descendants into a powerful force in Israeli politics, died on Monday…Yosef was often called the outstanding Sephardic rabbinical authority of the century.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that Rabbi Yosef was “one of the great halachic authorities of our generation. Rav Ovadia was a giant in Torah and halakha…He worked hard to glorify the heritage of Israel.”
These are the teachings of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the object of media and Israeli veneration:
Arab people should be exterminated: “May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them. It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones.” (2001 Passover sermon. Cf. Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], April 12, 2001).
Gentiles likened to donkeys who exist only to serve the Jews: “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel…With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.” Jerusalem Post, October 18, 2010. (Concerning this identification of goyim with donkeys, Yosef was repeating the teaching of the Talmud in the aforementioned BT Berakhot 58a, as well as BT Kiddushin 68b).
The Talmudic theology that produced Ovadia Yosef, also produced the prominent Israeli Rabbi Bentzi Gopstein, who advocates the burning of Christian churches on Israeli territory (cf. The Telelgraph [UK] Aug. 6, 2015). He has declared that Christian “Missionary work must not be given a foothold… Let’s throw the vampires out of our land before they drink our blood again.” (Forward, [New York Judaic newspaper], Dec. 24, 2015).
Gopstein is a leader in Lehava (ץ הקודש LiMniat Hitbolelut B’eretz HaKodesh: “The Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land,” which attacks Palestinians who date or marry Judaic women. In 2010, “Multiple rebbetzins, (wives of rabbis), acting on behalf of Lehava, issued an open letter urging Israeli women not to associate with ‘non-Jews.” It advised, “Don’t date non-Jews, don’t work at places that non-Jews frequent, and don’t do national service with non-Jews.” The letter implied that if the women did so, they would be cut off from their ‘holy race.” (Cf. “Rabbis’ Wives Urge Israeli Women: Stay Away from Arab men” Haaretz December 28, 2010; also: Jerusalem Post, December 28, 2010).
The leading Israeli settler-Rabbi Shlomo Aviner declared that the devastating fire at Notre Dame cathedral in April, 2019 was God’s curse—divine retribution for medieval Catholics putting the Babylonian Talmud on trial: “Aviner said it was a result of the Paris trial, ‘In which Jewish sages in France of that generation were forced into confrontation with the Christian sages. The result was the burning of the Talmud. The Talmud books were brought to the Notre Dame square in 20 wagons…and were burned there, meaning, 1,200 Talmud books… Aviner, now the rabbi of the West Bank settlement Beit El, said it is a mitzvah — a deed done from religious duty — to set fire to churches in Israel…” (Cf. Yotam Berger, Haaretz, April 17, 2019).
“The great Christian Church in Paris is on fire. Should we feel sorry for that, or should we rejoice, as it [the cathedral] is idolatry, which it is a mitzvah to burn?…Several immensely important rabbinic rulers, most prominent among them Maimonides, ruled that churches are places of idolatry and ought to be destroyed. The rulings are very clear.”—Rabbi Shlomo Aviner.
Hasbara (Israeli propaganda) is so intense and widely repeated in the western media that it has managed to convince the non-Talmudic world that these Orthodox rabbis and their declarations are “an exception, a marginal extremist phenomenon condemned by the mainstream.” It is true that sophisticated public relations experts can be depended upon to parade a long line of Orthodox rabbis who will offer lip service-denunciation of the openly hateful Talmudists. But these protests are mainly for public consumption, targeted at naive gentiles. The racism and bigotry toward Palestinians, Christians and goyim in general is a direct transmission from the Babylonian Talmud and the later rabbinic legal texts that are the heirs of its didactic hermeneutic.
The Talmudic dictum to show no mercy to a non-Jew is taught at yeshivas in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, where settler institutes of higher education in places such as Petach Tikvah turn out recruits for service in “elite combat units” of the Israeli army and air force. Regiments and squadrons composed of these Talmudic-Zionist troops are among the most brutal in the Israeli military.
Objection: Problematic Talmud Citations are taken “Out of Context”
Context is everything for the defenders of the Talmudic rabbinic theology. Fair enough. But by “context” they do not mean taking into account the surrounding text, but rather submitting to Judaism’s own narrative about itself, which includes how it chooses to present the malevolent contents of the Talmud to non-Judaic audiences. In their eyes, “misuse” of knowledge of rabbinic texts is defined as employing those texts for “polemical” purposes. In their view, no polemic contra Talmudic Judaism is permissible, however authentically contextual it may be.
In considering the low value which the Talmudic religious system places on nefesh-deficient (lesser-souled) non-Jews, we can find no substantial body of exculpatory halakhic texts that radically contradict this racist-supremacist (and potentially homicidal) theology. The quotations we have furnished above are grounded in rabbinic law. This is a tragedy of course, but the facts speak for themselves and no amount of pressure or intimidation alters this truth or causes us to withdraw that which advances human knowledge and serves to prevent racism, hatred and violence.
We are aware that Jew-haters throughout history have attempted to exploit the lamentable facts about the rabbinic tradition as a means of engaging in the reverse of what the Talmudic rabbis do to goyim: oppress and subjugate them. The perverse irony of Jew-hatred rests in the fact that it is often a mirror image of goyim-hatred.
There is nothing in the teachings of Jesus Christ and His apostles which directs or condones hatred of Jews. Jesus taught, “Salvation is of the Jews.” He first came “only unto “he lost sheep of the House of Israel,” and all of his initial followers, as well as His Blessed Mother, were Jews. When so-called “Christians” crusade to oppress or violently suppress Jews they are doing so without a Biblical foundation; contrary to the teachings of the Moshiach (Messiah) of Israel.
Whereas hatred, violence and bigotry are in accord with the holiest texts of Judaism: the Mishnah, Gemara, Mishneh Torah, Shulchan Aruch, Mishanh Berurah, to which the Old Testament is subordinated.
Until the founding of the Israeli state, violence toward goyim was less widespread and the idea of building a Judaic military force or to propose a mission of conquest or capture of land designated as “Israel,” was abhorrent to Orthodox Judaism and opposed to Talmudic theology. It is important to note that theologically-motivated murderers have risen commensurate with the ascendance of the Zionist ideology.
The Satmar Grand Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum has written Maamar Shalosh Shevuos, a treatise on the history and theology of pre-Zionist Orthodox Judaism, extending back centuries. During that time he demonstrates that the Talmudic theology taught that “Jews” were forbidden to found a nation-state of any kind until the Messiah appears, and forbidden to engage in military warfare against the goyim. Prior to the introduction of the heresy of Zionism in the 19th century, and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook’s theology in the 20th, the religion predicated on the Talmud strictly proscribed founding any so-called “state of Israel” on any land anywhere on earth, and least of all in the God-forsaken sandbox misnamed the “Holy Land.” The dogma was and remains that only Moshiach could found Israel on earth and no one else was allowed to do so, not even the provocateur whose alias was Ben-Gurion, and his clique of atheists, socialists and Stalinists.
(The principal anti-Zionist texts of Hasidic Judaism are I. Domb’s classic, The Transformation, and Yaakov Shapiro’s massive, The Empty Wagon: Zionism’s Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft).
Among the minority of non-Zionist Talmudic Judaics (they are a substantial minority in Hasidic ranks), who have adhered to this doctrine that no Jewish state may be founded prior to the coming of Moshiach, they typically bear no blood guilt for the countless murders of the Arabs of Lebanon and Palestine, which the Zionists have falsely perpetrated in the name of the “Jewish people.” Occupied Palestine is a counterfeit Israel and Zionists do not represent or speak for all Judaic persons.
This is not to say that Talmudism, in its original form prior to the late 19th century and the rise of Zionism, was benevolently disposed toward goyim. Far from it. Israeli scholar Rami Rosen’s study, “History of a Denial,” which appeared in the Israeli magazine Haaretz in 1996, wrote, “A check of main facts of the (rabbinic) historiography of the last 1500 years shows that the picture is different from the one previously shown to us. It includes massacres of Christians; mock repetitions of the crucifixion of Jesus that usually took place on Purim; cruel murders within the family; liquidation of informers, often done for religious reasons by secret rabbinical courts, which issued a sentence of rodef (‘pursuer’), and appointed secret executioners; assassinations of adulterous women in synagogues and/or the cutting of their noses by command of the rabbis.”
Plausible Denial and Institutionalized Deception
Secrecy concerning what Judaism actually teaches and represents is not as necessary in these days of rabbinic supremacy as it once was, for the reason expressed in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?” (Act 5:1)
Nonetheless, the propaganda continues and on the Internet there are Zionist rabbinic statements decrying the “commentary” and “interpretations” which Rabbi Ginsburgh and his like-minded fellow haters, such as Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Rabbi Dov Lior, Bentzi Gopstein, Michael Ben-Ari, Rabbi Saadya Grama, Rabbi Meir Kahane, Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, and others have supposedly falsely “imposed” on a blamelessly benign Talmud and ancillary halakhic texts.
These condemnations are not worth the paper they were written on. They are often put forth in the form of the standard disinformation which only am ha’aretz would believe, to wit, that the Mishnah and Gemara do not constitute rabbinic law, being merely various back-and-forth debates. As we have shown, this claim is retailed without stating that the zuggot pairs in Talmudic hermeneutics, such as the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel, each have the force of law at different times under given circumstances, due to the fact that a primary rabbinic exegetical principle is situation ethics.
Moreover, and this point is key, a principled Judaic protest contra racist rabbis, in order to have a reforming impact on Orthodox Judaism itself, would have to entail a repudiation of the iniquitous sacred texts upon which the bigotry and incitement to violence are predicated. Yet, there is no such repudiation in any of the signed declarations by supposed “enlightened” Orthodox rabbis allegedly attempting to distance their theology from that of a Meir Kahane or a Yitzchak Ginsburgh. Hence, it is not difficult to determine that the quintessence of the iniquitous Talmudic theology is upheld by these alleged rabbinic opponents of violence-prone, hate-spewing rabbis. What the supposed dissenters are doing is giving a deceitful public relations spin to Zionist-Talmudic theology, in the expectation that this will suffice to disarm critics and quiet any indignation or alarm that manifests among the public at large in the face of the awful truth about the Babylonian Talmud and its adherents.
The famed Rabbi Yosef Hayim of Baghdad, in Torah Lishmah, section 364, put forth the grounds for deception: “Behold, I set for you a table full of many aspects of permissibility in the matter of lying and deceit which are mentioned in the words of the Sages. Carefully examine each case and extract conclusions from each of them.”
In response to this study, Talmudists may attempt to deny everything, based on the invocation of their considerable clout and prestige: “The author is lying about Judaism because we say he is lying about Judaism.” That’s one simple tactic that has succeeded in terminating further investigation.
The recently deceased Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, translator of the Talmud Bavli, was an illustrious pillar of Chabad-Lubavitch Zionist Hasidism. So elevated was his position in Orthodox Judaism that in Tiberias he was named the Nasi (leader) of the reconstituted Sanhedrin. Rabbi Steinsaltz wrote:
“Rabbis are liable to alter their words, and the accuracy of their statements is not to be relied upon.” (The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition, Vol. II, pp. 48-49 [Random House]).
In attempting to explain Talmudism’s penchant for lying, Judaic scholar Ari Zivotofsky states that truthfulness is not an absolute imperative in Orthodox Judaism, and that while the “value of truth permeates the fabric of Judaism…there are other ethical imperatives which are, in fact, often side by side with truth…The problems arise when two or more of these principles come into conflict…As is often the case with a legal/ philosophical issue, the black and white answer is not to be found…” According to Zivotofsky, “avoiding great embarrassment or financial loss at the hands of the unscrupulous may be legitimate motives for lying. The Talmudic sages were serious about lying in order to recover (or keep) property from illegitimate hands.” (BT Yoma 83b).
We note with considerable dismay the dissimulation employed to assert (as Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List does) that, “The Talmud teaches that to save one life is to save the entire world.”
This preposterous humanitarian gloss applied to the rabidly ethnocentric Talmud, was given credibility, both as dialogue in Spielberg’s movie and as the film’s motto, reproduced on countless posters that probably adorn school rooms to this day. The motto, dramatized in the film, is a purported to be a quote from BT Sanhedrin 37a, but the Talmud contains no such humanistic, universalist statement.
The uncensored Babylonian Talmud in Sanhedrin 37a is concerned only with the welfare of fully human beings, i.e. those described in its text as “Jews.” The actual Talmud tractate reads: “Whoever saves a single life in Israel, Scripture regards him as if he had saved the entire world” (emphasis supplied).
This reflects the ruling of Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah, Sefer Nezikin, Rotzeach u’Shmirat Nefesh, 1:1: “Whenever a person kills the soul of another person from Israel, he transgresses a negative commandment, as it says, “thou shalt not murder.” With his narrow definition of who should not be killed, Maimonides nullified the Word of God in Genesis 9:6, Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17.
Mr. Spielberg’s fraud was peddled throughout American culture and educational institutions. What is instructive about this faking is the extent to which the corporate media have been sublimely complicit in circulating it, while their “fact-checking” departments failed to detect the cheat, if indeed they bothered to undertake the obligation to do so.
Righteous “Noahide” Goyim?
Another gateway to making nice about the non-Jews is the much publicized “Noahide” (also spelled “Noachide”) status that it is said goyim can obtain to become “righteous.” However, one would do well to read the “fine print” of the misnamed Noahide laws (they have nothing to do with the Biblical Noah). Under these rabbinic laws, “idol worshippers” are liable to the death penalty. (BT Sanhedrin 57a). This should not be a source of anxiety, correct? After all, true Christians don’t worship idols.
Again, consult the fine print: the rabbinic legal authorities of Orthodox Judaism decree that the worship of Jesus Christ is “avodah zarah” (idol worship; cf. Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Avodat Kochavim 9:4; Teshuvos Pri ha-Sadeh 2:4. Also Igros Moshe, Y.D. 3:129-6).
Any non-Jew classed as a “Noahide” and who worships Jesus Christ as the Son of God is in for a lethal surprise: he or she is liable for the death penalty.
Moreover, Maimonides ruled that acceptance of Noahide status on the part of the goyim is not a choice, it is an obligation: “All of the inhabitants of the world are compelled to accept the Noahide laws. If any non-Jew does not accept these laws he should be killed.” —Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Hilchot Melachim U’Milchamoteihem (“Laws of Kings and Wars”), Section 8, Halakha 10.
This passage from Hilchot Melachim deals with battle captives, but in the course of elucidating those laws pertaining to captives, Maimonides is drawing on the larger corpus of laws having to do with non-Jews; i.e. the Seven Laws of the Noahide. (Maimonides is specifically cited in this regard in Tosefot Yom Tov, Avot 3:14). The call to execute all those “among the nations” (goyim) who do not accept the Noahide laws (not just those who are prisoners of war), is indubitably present in Hilchot Melachim 8:10.
In the twenty-first century that killing can occur in Palestine, where the Israelis are supreme. In Europe and America Judaic executions of those who worship Jesus Christ as God, or refuse to submit to the Noahide laws, cannot as of this writing, take place overtly. This is due to Judaism’s previously noted situation ethics. Maimonides decreed that killings of obstreperous non-Jews can only occur overtly in those places and situations where “the hand of Israel is powerful over them.” In other words, where Judaic supremacy is complete, or nearly so. (Hilchot Melachim 8:9).
For Christians, the belief that adhering to Noahide laws renders them “righteous gentiles” in the eyes of the Orthodox rabbis, is a perilous fiction.
Conclusion
It has been our regrettable duty in these pages to bear witness to the appalling truth that Orthodox rabbinic Judaism constitutes a virulent and brutally racist dehumanization and detestation of gentiles, and a concomitant idolization of persons who are Jewish; this being the predominant difference between the two.
The denial of the full humanity of non-Jewish persons is the axis upon which the theology of Talmudism is founded and sustained.
Jesus Christ took a different path. It was He who declared of the Roman soldier, “Greater faith than this I have not seen in all Israel” (Matthew 8:5-10).
Michael Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press, the author of nine books of history and literature and the editor of the periodical, Revisionist History®.
Website: www.RevisionistHistory.org • Twitter: @HoffmanMichaelA
For Further Research:
Basri, Ezra, Ethics of Business Finance & Charity, six volumes, (Jerusalem: Haktav Press, 1987-1993)
Biale, David, et al., Hasidism: A New History (Princeton University Press, 2018)
Domb, I. (Rabbi Yerachmiel), The Transformation: The Case of the Neturei Karta (1958)
Clifton, Tony, and Leroy, Catherine, God Cried (Quartet Books, 1983). The only comprehensive book in English documenting the Israeli air force terror bombing of the city of Beirut, Lebanon during the summer of 1982.
Eaford, Witness of War Crimes in Lebanon: Testimony Given to the Nordic Commission, Oslo, October 1982 (Ithaca Press, 1983)
Eisenmenger, Johann Andreas, Entdecktes Judenthum, two volumes (1700). Unsurpassed inaugural scientific study of the Babylonian Talmud and related rabbinic texts by the Heidelberg University Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic. In German in the old 17th century typeface. Digitally reprinted in 2007 by Independent History and Research. Over 2,000 pages scanned in a pdf. text file; a facsimile of the rare first edition, which was almost entirely destroyed by the Holy Roman Emperor at the request of his financiers.
Finkelstein, Norman G., Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (University of California, 2006)
Finkelstein, Norman G., This Time We Went Too Far (OR Press, 2011). One of the most important of all chronicles of the Israeli massacres of Arab civilians.
Foxbrunner, Roman A., Habad: The Hasidism of Shneur Zalman of Lyady (Jacob Aronson, 1993)
Friedman, Robert I., The False Prophet Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant To Knesset Member. (Lawrence Hill & Co., 1990)
Friedman, Robert I., Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel’s West Bank Settlement Movement. (Random House, New York, 1992)
Ganzfried, Shlomo, Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, two volumes, trans. by Avrohom Davis (1996)
Ginsburgh, Yitzchak, Baruch Hagever (1998)
Grama, Saadya, Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut (2003)
Halevi, Yehuda, The Kuzari: In Defense of the Despised Faith (Jacob Aronson, 1998)
Hoffman, Michael, “Introduction,” in Johann Andreas Eisemenger’s The Traditions of the Jews (Independent History and Research, 2006), pp. 6-93.
Hoffman, Michael, Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit (2008)
Hoffman, Michael, Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded (2011)
Hoffman, Michael and Lieberman, Moshe, The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians (2005)
Horowitz, Elliott, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (2008)
Kagan, Yisrael Meir, Mishnah Berurah, twenty volumes (Feldheim, 2005)
Kahane, Meir, They Must Go (1981)
Kaye, Evelyn, The Hole in the Sheet (1987)
Koestler, Arthur, The Thirteenth Tribe (1976)
Lebovitz, Moishe Dovid, Halachically Speaking, seven volumes (2008-2018)
Maciejko, Pawel, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755-1816 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)
Martin, Tony, The Jewish Onslaught: Despatches from the Wellesley Battlefront (1993)
Matt, Daniel, The Zohar, nine volumes (Stanford University Press, 2003-2016). This is the uncensored English translation of one of the principal texts of the Kabbalistic canon.
McCaul, Alexander, The Talmud Tested: A Comparison of the Religion of Judaism with the Religion of Moses (Independent History and Research, 2006). McCaul was Professor of Hebrew at King’s College, London. He converted thousands of Judaics to Christ, including rabbis. This is a reprint of his classic work, first published in 1837, with an introduction by Hoffman.
Nation of Islam, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, three volumes (1991, 2010 and 2016). An indispensable revisionist history of black enslavement in America and its aftermath.
Neusner, Jacob, The Mishnah: A New Translation (Yale University Press, 1988)
Pappe, Ilan, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2007)
Sand, Shlomo, The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso, 2009)
Shahak, Israel, and Mezvinsky, Norton, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Press, 2004)
Shahak, Israel, Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994)
Shapira, Yitzhak, and Elitzur, Yosef, Torat Ha-Melekh: Berure Halakha Be’-inyene Malkhut U-Milhamot (Yeshivat Od Yosef Chai, 2009)
Shapiro, Marc B., Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History (Littman, 2015)
Shapiro, Yaakov, The Empty Wagon: Zionism’s Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft (Bais Medrash Society, 2018)
Sprinzak, Ehud, Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination (1999).
Steinsaltz, Adin, Opening the Tanya (2003)
Steinsaltz, Adin, The Koren Talmud Bavli, 42 volumes (Koren Publishing Jerusalem, 2012-2019). A mostly uncensored English-language Babylonian Talmud. Various “explanatory” margin notes have been added seemingly to lessen the shock of the reader’s encounter with the corpus of the Judaism’s holiest books, such as Sanhedrin 54b (cf. vol. 30, p. 41), where the reader confronts one of the most startling expositions extant of Talmudic permission for criminal conduct.
Steinsaltz, Adin, The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition, 22 volumes (1989). A little more than one-half of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s uncensored Talmud of Babylon in English, the printing of which was abruptly halted by Random House midway through publication. The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition is particularly valuable for the inclusion of Steinsaltz’s candid בָּרַיְיתָא (baraitot).
Wolf, Arnold Jacob, “Habad’s Dead Messiah,” in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Life and Thought (Winter, 2002), pp. 109-115.
Yarden, Ophir, “Recent Halakhic Discourse in Israel Encouraging Racism and Violence,” in Svartvik J., and Wirén J. (eds.) Religious Stereotyping and Interreligious Relations (2013), pp. 221-231.
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